This invention relates to training apparatus for developing specific athletic abilities and court skills of volleyball players.
All members of a volleyball team must be able to perform several essential ball-striking tasks such as serving, passing, setting and spiking. While most players acquire rudimentary abilities through their participation in routine team practices and competitive game play, repetitive drills are generally employed by teachers and coaches to maximize each player's proficiency. Likewise, individual players may be highly drilled in a given task in order that they may become exceptionally adept in some specific aspect of game play such as setting or spiking the ball. Usually only a limited amount of space suitable for volleyball practice is available in a typical gymnasium and this same space must be shared with other sports activities; therefore, disposable court space and time will be devoted, in the main, to full team practice in order that the greatest possible number of players may benefit. Such lack of court time beyond team practice needs reduces or eliminates opportunities for teaching and drilling individual players for the purposes stated above.
Should, however, court time be available for use by a trainee selected for individual coaching and drill, a significant amount of this time is unfortunately lost in retrieving practice balls which become scattered about the court area. Either the practice session must be periodically interrupted to recover balls, or one or more persons must chase down and return balls as they are struck by the trainee. Thus ball retrieval is an interruptive, inefficient and annoying aspect of a practice exercise which takes place on but one side of the net.
Off-court drills which involve striking the ball against a wall surface to approximate serving or spiking, for example, are impractical in several respects. The player does not practice ball-handling technics under court conditions consistant with those encountered during actual game play; ball retrieval creates the troublesome interruptions cited above; and, there is a risk that a player's momentum may cause him to collide with the wall surface or that he may be injured by a sharply rebounding ball.
One commercially available training apparatus limited to developing ball spiking skill comprises an upright standard which may be positioned next to the net and has laterally extending arms near its upper end which releasably hold a ball therebetween somewhat above the upper edge of the net. A player may practice his spiking technic by jumping upwardly and driving the ball over the net from between the ball-holding arms. This apparatus exhibits several shortcomings; namely, the ball is held by the arms in an unrealistic, stationary manner; each time a ball is spiked the apparatus must be reloaded and the spiked ball must be retrieved; and, there exists a risk of injury to the player should he strike some portion of the standard with his arm or body. Moreover, such ancillary equipment must be transported to the court and set up each time it is used and storage of such sizable and awkward devices between uses may create a space problem.